Free Republic

We’ve been hearing an awful lot about “democracy” lately. We keep learning that it can only be promoted through the universal use of unaccountable ballot drop boxes that allow people to vote six or seven times. Congress is currently holding hearings about the grave threat to democracy presented by flyover country types wandering around the Capitol building that their tax dollars pay for. We even overthrew a popularly-elected government in Ukraine in 2014, and are trying to provoke a war with another nuclear-armed nation to keep it in power, all in the name of democracy. Of course, the commonality between...

Tuesday, MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough reacted to President Joe Biden’s Buffalo speech. Biden criticized figures in the media or online for spreading lies for “political gain and for profit.” Scarborough praised Biden’s remarks about the Buffalo shooting and suggested there were pundits “on a powerful cable news network” that were no longer “selling republicanism anymore.” Instead, the host said the network was “preaching racial hatred.”

Famed pastor and author Tim Keller said the American Church’s championing of the Republican Party over the last several decades has given Christian nationalism “a place where it could incubate.” “Christian nationalism works on fear and resentment,” Keller, founder and former pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City, said in an interview with the Church Leaders Podcast on Wednesday. “Friedrich Nietzsche said there is no truth. So you can't appeal to truth. What you appeal to is fear and resentment, and that's how you get power and that's how you win.” Keller said that while he agrees with the...

The Declaration of the People of the States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their...

The wild and raging Pachyderm Burned down the House, from roof to floor; Attacked the ravaged Town, in turn, Where reigned the foolish Mule before.

The Libertarian Party's presidential candidate Gary Johnson has long insisted that the presidential debates are key to his ticket's success. And getting into the debates, through the front door anyway, requires polling at 15 percent in five (as yet unnamed) reputable national polls. He's inching closer to that goal with today's announcement of his highest even national poll total, with 12 percent from Fox. He was only at 10 in their last presidential poll including him in May. Since that poll, Clinton stayed the same against him and Trump with 39 percent, while Trump fell from 42 percent to 36...

Even while the Civil War raged, slaves in Cuba could be heard singing, “Avanza, Lincoln, avanza! Tu eres nuestra esperanza!” (Onward, Lincoln, Onward! You are our hope!) – as if they knew, even before the soldiers fighting the war far to the North and long before most politicians understood, that the war in America would change their lives, and the world. The secession crisis of 1860-1861 threatened to be a major setback to the world antislavery movement, and it imperiled the whole experiment in democracy. If slavery was allowed to exist, and if the world’s leading democracy could fall apart...

I stumbled upon this while trying to research a matter and I was struck by Paine's simplicity and ... uhh ... common sense.It seems so fitting to post it and I hope I can post daily until all of Common Sense is re-published here ... in the Free Republic Paine so loved and articulated.

Perhaps everyone in the eighteenth century could have agreed that in theory no State was more beautiful than a republic, whose whole object by definition was the good of the people. Yet everyone knew it was a fragile beauty indeed. It was axiomatic that no society could hold together without the obedience of its members to the legally constituted authority. In a monarchy the complicated texture of the society, “the magnificence, costly equipage and dazzling splendors” lavished on the prince, the “multitude of criminal laws, with severe penalties, the very rigor of the unitary authority often with the aid of...

Candidate for Senate Dan Liljenquist (left) pledged to The New American that should he be elected to the U.S. Senate he will offer legislation explicitly repealing the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In a press conference held on April 24 at 2:00 p.m. (MDT), the former Utah State Senator and current GOP challenger to six-term Senator Orrin Hatch described the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA as “an overreach and a violation of the Bill of Rights.” He said that had he been in office when Congress voted to pass the NDAA he would have...

Spiritual Liberty. In the heavenly kingdom, spiritual law and spiritual liberty stand counterpoised. God has ordained a "spiritual law" or "law of conscience" to govern citizens of the heavenly kingdom. This law teaches "those things that God either requires of us or forbids us to do, both toward [ourselves] and towards others."28 Its provisions are written on the heart and conscience of each person, rewritten in the pages of Scripture, and summarized in the Ten Commandments.29 Obedience of this spiritual law leads to eternal blessings and beatitude in the life hereafter. Disobedience leads to eternal curses and condemnation. Since the...

Security sources in Northern Ireland fear the next attack by Republican dissidents is likely to involve a bomb, Sky News has confirmed. It follows reports that the Real IRA has smuggled a large device into the province from the South. Sky's Home Affairs correspondent Mark White says the focus of investigations is now on a 300lb car bomb left at Castelwellen at the end of January. That bomb was diffused after a warning call was received. It caused a security alert outside the town for five days. Security sources suggest that whoever put the "sophisticated" device together was an experienced...

Over the years, many well-meaning people from different Ideological mindsets have asked why are you a Conservative. Being a Conservative in America today is a unique opportunity to stand for something many have forgotten. My father told me years ago, "If you do not stand for something, you'll fall for anything." Thus, my explanation on why I choose to be a Conservative.

2008: THE REVOLUTION IS OVER It is Election Day, 2008, and the Revolution is over. With President-elect Barack Muad’dib Obama (D-Arrakis), at the top and their forces dominating the Congress, the liberals are politically invincible. And they have the will of the people at their backs, as well: it is plain from the vote totals that the common folk love Obama — love, not merely support – and will campaign for him, his cronies, and his proposals just as fervently post-election as they do now. And this situation is not going to change with the next election, either: by 2010,...

The Kos Kids are doing that lovable armchair analysis thing again, demonstrating with relentless logic that George Bush Fits Clinical Profile of a Psychopath to a Tee. The research of Dr. Hervey Cleckley and Dr. Robert Hare exploring the personality and character traits of psychopaths, when applied to George Bush, shows that he fits exactly the profile they developed for a classic psychopath. It's uncanny. The study also showed that "Republicanism" as political and social ideology... is even worse than psychopathy. It's almost cute how they periodically try to convince each other that Republicans aren't just wrong, they're hideous psychotic...

The fallout between state Sen. Pam Roach and GOP leadership over alleged bullying has overshadowed another claim: Senate Republicans are doing a lousy job of recruiting candidates and managing campaign money. That’s according to Sen. Don Benton, who sent a scathing letter to Senate colleagues last week after Roach was reprimanded for what Senate leaders called the mistreatment of staff members. “This is a sad commentary on the effectiveness of our whole team in recruiting candidates,” the four-term lawmaker from Vancouver wrote. “Think about it seriously, 16 Democrat seats up, seven where we stand a good chance … and only...

In an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times on October 10, 2007, University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato argues for scrapping our Constitution and replacing it with a new one. He couldn’t be more wrong. In support of his call to redo the Constitution, Sabato trots out a quote from Thomas Jefferson positing that a constitution is only good for nineteen years. The quote comes from a letter Jefferson sent to James Madison on September 6, 1789. In his response, Madison raised several fundamental flaws to Jefferson’s (and Sabato’s) reasoning. The one most applicable to our times is this...

In the heat of the electoral controversy — the worst possible time to make constitutional decisions — many people, such as Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton, are calling for an end to the Electoral College. Big mistake. Someone once said, Don’t knock down a wall merely because you cannot immediately see what it’s good for. The same can be said for the Electoral College. We should keep in mind that the Founding Fathers were of somewhat better caliber than the politician you are likely to see on television, including those with presidential ambitions. The Electoral College was not an idea floating...

Abstract: "The Irony of Populism: The Republican Shift and the Inevitability of American Aristocracy" analyzes the shift in the role of the Supreme Court following the movement towards a democratic Senate which culminated in the Seventeenth Amendment. The Supreme Court's shift is presented as the inevitable result of the system of mixed government that underlies the constitutional order, which orders American Government into democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical parts. While in the original conception of the constitution the Senate was the aristocratic part, the Senate would become part of the democratic part with the Seventeenth Amendment and prior procedural changes. Into...

Title: The Road to Mass Democracy: Original Intent and the Seventeenth Amendment Author: C. H. Hoebeke Published: New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Publishers, 1995. Price: $39.95 (hardcover) Pages: 211 Reviewer: Todd J. Zywicki Affiliation: Mississippi College School of Law The Constitution of 1787 provided for the appointment of United States senators by state legislatures. In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified, installing the current regime of direct election of U.S. senators. The bloated and special-interest-driven nature of the federal government during this century has led scholars in recent years to reexamine the original framework of the Senate and to...